Red Shoes, Black Coffee (Red & Black #2)

4 | What if?

Jed

"So I guess the little red bombshell from earlier is the one, huh?" Carla asks, letting out a wisp of smoke.

She adjusts herself on the turned-up bucket she's sitting on and I arch a brow.

"So you haven't been completely MIA, huh?" I ask.

She shrugs, taking a drag of her cigarette. The little storage holding all the things we need to clean the shop once everyone's gone is the only place free of smoke sensors. Carla always hides in here after, - and sometimes, like today, during, - her shift to smoke a cigarette or two. I watch as she sucks the smoke into her lungs, then holds it there for a while before breathing it out slowly. "I told you. I see everything."

I make an agreeing noise, because it's true. With Carla nearby, walls have ears. I don't know how, but even when she appears not to be there, she always knows all the events that took place during her 'absence'. At first, it seemed creepy and a bit terrifying, but after over a year of friendship it no longer disturbs me.

It has become a fact, and facts are not something to be feared.

"So?" she prods when I still don't say anything. She isn't looking at me, toying with the end of one of the many dreadlocks decorating her head, but I know she's waiting for me to answer. "How is she here?"

During the past year for which I've known Carla, she got to know Ada quite well. We met shortly after I came to New York, lovesick and still a little heartbroken. The first thing she did when she saw me looking like a piece of shit was to offer me a cigarette, then forced me to talk when I informed her I didn't smoke. We pretty much have been friends ever since.

Not the most adorable of stories, but it works for me.

It's my turn to shrug, stirring the metal shelf I'm leaning at. Pushing off it, I steady a bottle of some detergent threatening to topple over the edge. "She came here to study." I simply say. "She said her school was three blocks away."

"Holy shit." Carla sits up straighter, her eyes widening. Instantly, her body bends forward as she falls into a coughing fit, having inhaled too much smoke. I rush forward to pat her on the back, but she just waves me off. She goes on coughing for a while, and once she finishes, there are tears in her eyes. "Your girl studies at Juilliard?"

"I don't know." I admit but my heart stumbles. Is this true? Has Ada really chosen music and went to Juilliard?

"She does." Carla nods. "There are many unis around here but if she said that hers is the one three blocks away, then it's Juilliard."

My breath stalls. I have been living here for some time now, but New York City is a big city. Figuring an exact location of everything here is going to take me some more time. I have moved to Bronx only recently and have yet to discover my old neighborhood, the Manhattan.

"I guess you didn't know, then." she says over a wisp of smoke.

I shake my head. I knew nothing. Not of her plans to pick up music. Not of her coming here. Not of applying to Juilliard. She must have been planning it some time before I even left. University applications start at the beginning of December. I left in the second week of January.

She must have been hiding this from me for a whole month.

Suddenly, I feel the need to punch something.

"Well." Carla says, standing. Throwing the butt onto the floor, she crashes it with her shoe and kicks it under the shelves. "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you. But I'm not shitting you. Julliard is three blocks away from here."